


New Experiences

by SayNevermore



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), accidentally ignores half AoU to push my own headcanons in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 02:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3878263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SayNevermore/pseuds/SayNevermore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long time since the Barton's house hasn't been full of noise and Clint starts to think he's too old for this.</p><p>Spoilers of Age of Ultron, like, lots. Come back when you've seen it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Experiences

**Author's Note:**

> My girl asked for a miracle so here is my fix-it fic for Pietro Maximoff.  
> This is a trainwreck, I have no fucking idea what I was trying to do here.  
> Obvious spoilers of the movie.  
> But well, I hope you'll still enjoy it a little.

It’s been a long time since the Barton’s house hadn’t been disturbed by the screams of a baby in the middle of the night. Cooper was crying a lot, but Lila had been quickly quiet, sleeping like the dead in a couple of months – to the point, actually, where it was Laura who used to wake up in the middle of the night just to make sure she was still breathing.  
But Nathaniel seems to follow the path of his older brother, and would get his parents out of bed three times in the night for reasons known of him only, reasons that called for desperate crying and wiggling in his little bed until someone picks him up and prevents his face to turn blue.  
Barton starts to think he’s getting too old to have children again.  
He carries the six months baby in his arms through the corridor, so Laura’s ears are preserved from the screams and she can find sleep again while he walks and walks around to try and calm the little one down. “Your turn, Clint,” she had muffled from the other side of the bed before putting the pillow on her head and Clint had not tried to argue that he had actually been up last, or that when her turn comes she usually mumbles things about “letting him cry” and how “it’s better to let him learn”, he’d gladly obliged and picked up little Nat, secured him in his arms and went on a walk through the house until the crying and screaming stops.  
Okay, this baby is the best thing that has ever happened to him since Lila and Cooper but god, which side of the family gave him such a voice? He might talk to Laura about giving him the room next to theirs – with a baby phone of course but he wouldn’t wake up with screams directly in his ears anymore – and moving Cooper with Lila in the guest’s room, since it’s the biggest one… so Natasha could still sleep with them on a mattress when she comes. She always stays up too late with them to play games and tell stories, so it wouldn’t make a difference. Or maybe she could stay with little Nat and scare him once and for all so he stops disturbing his parents at night…  
“You’re going to give me hell when you grow up, aren’t you?” he sighs to the boy and the baby takes a deep breath, finally closing his eyes and turning to rest against his dad’s chest. “Oh, yes. You and your siblings, you’re going to be terrible teenagers and I will regret the time when I was only fighting evil robots…”  
A soft cry reaches his ear as he walk past the current guest-room and he stops, all senses on alert.

Yeah, it’s been a long time since the house hasn’t been disturbed by the screams of a baby but it could be easier to deal with if he hadn’t two children to take care of.  
Wedging little Nat on one arm, he frees one of his hands and knocks very carefully on the door. A long sniff answers him and he takes it as an invitation to enter.  
“Nightmares again, huh?” he smiles, leaning against the doorframe as a little light gets switched on next to the bed.  
Wanda nods her head, eyes red and runny nose, face half-hidden behind her naked knees. She keeps wanting to wear Laura’s old nightgown from when she was pregnant, which is too big for her narrow shoulders and floats around her tiny body, but neither her or Clint tried to argue against it. If she feels better this way, then let it be.  
Clint enters the room, takes the box of Kleenex on the old dressing table and brings it to the bed, sitting at the far end of it with the baby still held tight against his chest.  
“Wanna talk about it?” he asks but unsurprisingly, she just shakes her head.  
“’T’s always the same,” she falters, taking the box in her hands. “It just… keeps happening…”  
“It’s going to be fine, eventually,” Clint murmurs with an encouraging smile.  
“But when?”  
“Can’t tell that, I’m sorry. Have you tried talking to Nat or Maria like I told you?”  
She shakes her head, sniffing again. “S’not them I want to hear…”  
They just sigh together.  
“I know, I know… I’m sorry…”  
She keeps shaking her head and using tissue after tissue.  
“S’not your fault,” she mumbles behind it. “It’s just… hard…”  
As she starts to break again, silently curling up, Clint raises a hand to massage her shoulder.  
“Hey, wanna hold the baby?”  
She looks up, raising her eyebrows.  
“Sorry?”  
“Well he’s warm, he’s cute and it seems like the two of you could use some human presence to sleep better. So if you want to keep him… I trust you enough with it.”  
Wanda looks at Nathaniel with wild eyes.  
“But, what if I…”  
“Sweetie, you’re not going to hurt him. I told you, I trust you with him. Do you want to try?”  
She looks at the little thing sleeping against Clint’s chest for a long moment, but then, she straightens her legs and raise timid hands toward him. Clint manages to make the little body slide from his arms to those of her honorary older sister and makes sure she has the right position and grip, before completely letting go of him. Little Nat immediately buries his head between her small breasts and she can’t help but smile.  
“I know,” Clint laughs, “feeling better already, right?” He pats her head, getting up. “Sleep well, you two. If he wakes up, just… give him to Laura, okay?”  
But not a sound comes disturbing the house for the rest of the night and by the time Clint wakes up, Laura is already in the kitchen with the kids, teaching Wanda how to test if the milk isn’t too hot. 

So now Wanda sleeps with Nathaniel in the room next to their own, with the baby phone next to her head, and Cooper can’t stop bickering about how he has the biggest room for him alone.  
Well, okay, Laura kind of threw a temper at Clint the first morning for letting their baby sleep wi _th a superhuman girl god what if she gets a violent nightmare and kills him what if she crushes him in her sleep have you gone mad answer me Clinton Francis Barton_ but she loves Wanda too much to hold a grief against her, and the girl proved herself surprisingly able to take care of a baby. She makes small objects float around him and he laughs for hours, trying to catch the bright red light created by the hands of the young girl.  
And sure, Wanda isn’t really their daughter, but there is something, in the way the eyes of this baby glow with joy, that reminds Clint terribly of Pietro.  
Now he only wakes them up three times a week but half of those, Wanda just sobs a “sorry” through the baby phone and takes care of it herself.  
Clint hasn’t been talking to her about the nightmares anymore. She told him she didn’t want to join any “fight for humanity” until her own thoughts on the subject haven’t been sorted out, but she got her own personal laptop from Maria who probably also configured her mailbox and anyway, he keeps receiving updates on how the Avengers are doing so she’s certainly not left alone. Also once, Natasha went to see the little boy who almost shared her name and the two girls locked themselves in the room for two hours, so whatever they had to say to each other, saying has obviously been done. Clint is not going to pressure her into talking to him now if she doesn’t feel the need to. He’s never been really good to say things, anyway.  
He’d just like to erase the look she’s got sometimes, when she’s lost in her thoughts and her eyes are staring at the void for too long, as if reading things, terribly sad things, in the invisible. 

They get used to it. The reassuring shushing of Wanda through the baby phone as she tries to calm Nathaniel down at night, her soft groans when she realizes he needs to be changed, the sounds of someone – either Laura or herself sometimes now – in the little bathroom, the creak of the floor when she walks with him in the corridor, and sometimes, the thin accents of a voice singing him to sleep.  
So obviously, when he wakes up one night with nothing else in his ears than the screams of his son, Clint feels jolted out of sleep in one second and runs to the next room as if his life depended on it. Something isn’t right, _something isn’t right_.  
He hears Laura moving and calling him weakly from their bed but he can’t bring himself to answer as he takes Nathaniel from the empty bed and secures him in his arms, quickly going down the steps to find his missing adopted daughter.  
The first floor is completely dark, drowned in silence, with only the faint light of the moon piercing through the curtains in the living-room to help Clint see the shape of the furniture, and… and a completely unnatural ray of light coming from the front door.  
“Wanda?” he asks, trying not to talk too loud while at the same time covering the screams of his son that he’s too preoccupied to stop right now.  
A cold breeze blows against his arm as he approaches the door, with careful steps and his arms tightened around his crying son, ready to curl up around him to protect him. The light is bright, so bright, much brighter than the weak bulb he put above the door on the outside to help them see the lock when they come back at night. It feels like the big spotlights SHIELD uses around protected areas and he doesn’t like that at all.  
He pushes the half-open door with a foot. _Please just let it be Wanda with a flashlight taking a night walk for whatever reason, even if she would never let her honorary brother alone in the room, please let it just be neglect on her behalf and not anything else…_  
The door hits the wall with a soft knock.  
Wanda isn’t outside and the light has no easily identifiable source, it’s too bright and white and coming from everywhere and whoever is playing a trick on him is going to find an arrow up his ass as soon as Clint puts his hand on his emergency bow because there’s no way he’s going to just believe what he’s seeing here…  
“Didn’t see that coming, huh?” Pietro asks, his bloody smile shining even brighter than the light around him and suddenly he falls forward and Clint nearly drops his baby to try and catch the void.  
The picture disappears immediately and he blinks a few times to erase the dark spots left in his vision by an imaginary light.  
Something’s definitely not right.  
“Laura?” he calls loudly through the house, although the screams of their son must have completely awoken her since a long time now.  
He turns around slowly, eyes aiming for the places he usually hides a weapon, but finds himself facing an equally surprised and terrified Wanda Maximoff, who holds a scream as she jumps in surprise.  
“Oh thank god, there you are,” is the first thing Clint lets out. “What the hell just happened?”  
Wanda looks at him with big eyes, then looks at Nathaniel, and puts her hand against her mouth.  
“I’m sorry,” she says very quickly, “I couldn’t sleep so I went to pour myself a glass of water, I only left him alone for one minute I swear…”  
She raises her hands to take the baby but Clint doesn’t move, so she awkwardly pats her small head, which seems to be enough for him to lower the volume at least.  
“Why is the door open, then?” Clint asks her a little dryly as she does.  
She looks at it over Clint’s shoulder but her brows furrow.  
“It wasn’t open. You just opened it,” she says slowly.  
“I just went to see why it was already open.”  
“It wasn’t when I went down.”  
“Oh, great, so something that isn’t you just entered my house…”  
“There’s nobody here, Clint. I assure you. I would feel it.”  
Clint stares at her, mouth open.  
“So you’re telling me I’ve been hallucinating? Not only the… the light, but also the whole thing?”  
“The light? I don’t know…”  
“You didn’t do anything?”  
“I would never do anything to you. Clint, I swear…”  
“It’s okay. I believe you.”  
He sighs deeply, turning back at the door, slowly closing it and turning the lock. Of course there’s no reason for Wanda to mess with his mind but why would his own brain show him Pietro and why now?  
“Clint? Is everything okay?”  
He turns back again, looking at the dark silhouette of Laura down the stairs. He can’t see if the look on her face is concern or suspicion but he can hear a bit of both in her voice.  
“Yeah, sorry. My fault. I panicked.”  
“What happened?”  
“Nothing. Here, take the kid and, go back to sleep okay? Everyone goes back to sleep. Sorry for waking you.”  
He walks past Wanda to give Nathaniel to his wife, blocking her when she tries to get back in her room right behind Laura. He waits until he hears the door close.  
“Wanda, if something was happening… you’d tell me, right?”  
She looks at him and even in the dark it’s obvious that she’s worried and trying to avoid his gaze.  
“Nothing is happening, Clint. Promise.”

He keeps looking at her suspiciously the morning after, though, when she’s too occupied playing with Lila and Cooper to notice him. He hasn’t been sleeping very well through the rest of the night and was up too early in the morning. He pretended to be tired to Laura when she told him he was staring, but she didn’t believe him of course.

“Listen, if there’s something going on, I want to know. I… I like her Clint, and I really want to trust her, but I can’t do it if you can’t.”  
“I know… I trust her, I really do. If she’s doing something and doesn’t want to tell us, I suppose it’s for the best. I’d just… like to know if she’s really doing something or if I am being paranoid.”  
“What really happened that night, Clint?”  
“I… I saw something. Someone. Someone dead.”  
“Pietro?”  
He nods, quickly looking back at the tomatoes he’s cutting when Wanda turns around to grab a new sheet of paper for Lila. When he looks up, it’s Laura who’s staring, but her look is sweet, caring.  
“Don’t you think you’re just feeling guilty because he saved your life?”  
“Yeah, I thought about that. But… I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up here.”  
“What?”  
He makes a face.  
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just being stupid, but… I called her when I was downstairs. And she should have heard Nathaniel crying. She’s crazy about that kid. Why didn’t she say anything? Why didn’t she come immediately? Where was she all this time?”

Clint doesn’t dream of Pietro after the incident. Not once. Here’s for his supposed post-traumatic disorder.  
Wanda stops sobbing through the baby phone. Nathaniel keeps waking up but she takes him and takes care of him without a word, discreet and efficient. Laura doesn’t even bother getting out of bed some nights. They just talk in the morning, while warming up the milk, and if there has been a problem, Wanda mentions it immediately and explains how she solved it. She looks more and more proud of herself as she deals with more and more complicated situations.  
But it still doesn’t cover up the tired stares at nothing, the long moments she spends lost in her thoughts, or the accidental knocking on things because she’s not looking around her when moving.  
“Everything’s okay?” Clint asks one day when they’re both sitting at the table and Wanda is scribbling absent-mindedly on a sheet of paper with Lila’s green pencil.  
“I’m fine, dad,” she answers with a smile, and they both stop in surprise. Her face goes instantly red. “I’m sorry, I…”  
“I don’t mind,” Clint laughs, “I could be, actually, so… I’ll just have to accept the fact that I’m an old man, now…”  
“I didn’t mean…”  
“I know what you meant, sweetie. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”  
She smiles again, shyly. She doesn’t answer the question. 

When he tells the story to Laura, she laughs.  
“I think you’re scaring her a little,” she says, eyes bright with joy.  
“What?”  
“She’s been calling me mum for a month now, but only when she knows you can’t hear it.”  
Clint shakes his head.  
“And you’re the one telling me you can’t trust her if I don’t…”  
“Well, I never accused her of doing anything. I just asked you what you were thinking.”  
“Yeah, whatever… it seems I was just imagining things anyway, so…”

They are in the kitchen stacking the dishes when Wanda screams and drops a plate at her feet.  
She had been fine all the evening, looking much more awake than usual, talking and laughing with the kids. They even talked about SHIELD, although she seems hesitant for different reasons now. Laura and Clint didn’t say anything, looking at each other above the table, but they shared a knowing smile. _She feels at home. She doesn’t want to leave._  
She’s looking at the window now and her eyes are full of tears and terror, her hands shaking, her mouth twisted. Laura and Clint are immediately around her, but she drops on her knees, ignoring the fragments of ceramic, and takes her head between her hands, tears crashing on the floor.  
“Wanda, what happens?” Clint grabs one of her wrists. “What’s going on?”  
“I don’t know!” She screams between her sobs. “I don’t want it, why does this keep happening, I can’t do it…”  
“It’s about the nightmares, right?” She raises her head a little at Clint’s words. “You saw him, right?”  
It leads to another pained face and more tears.  
“He’s not… he can’t be, he’s…”  
She coughs and sobs, hands gripping at her hair until their joints are white.  
“What’s happening to Wanda, mom?” Cooper asks behind Clint, and he sees Laura move.  
“Let her breathe, you two. She feels a little low, that’s all. Here, come with me.”  
“But dad is closest to her than us!” Lila protests. “Moooom!”  
Between the tears, Clint sees Wanda smiling a little.  
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I don’t want to worry your whole family…”  
“It’s okay. It’s okay, we want to help you, Wanda. Now, will you tell me what is going on?”

They end up on the couch, Wanda hidden under the nightgown, her arms around her knees, fidgeting with the fabric. Clint just sits next to her, looking at her eyes and waiting for the story to unfold.  
While Natasha was there, she apparently told him about which state her brother was kept. They were supposed to bury him, of course. Official ceremony with all the honours given to an actual member of SHIELD. But this was before they started noticing he was healing.  
Healing. The little bastard could regenerate much faster than anyone thanks to his “accelerated metabolism” and when they discovered it, he was estimated to be up in a few days… except he never actually woke up.  
“They think… they think he’s kind of… lost. And since I am the twin sister with mind powers, then… maybe I could… try something…”  
“You tried to… bring him back?”  
She nods.  
“So that night, my… hallucination…”  
“It wasn’t a ghost or anything. It’s not magic, he’s not… wandering around, only… inside himself. Inside us. That night, I just… kind of lost control and accidentally created a projection of him, but I assure you, there was nothing.”  
“And the open door…”  
“It was me… I walked around the house because I was afraid you’d find me…”  
“So you voluntarily scared the hell out of me to avoid me finding you trying to… telepathically talk to your brother?”  
“I’m sorry, I thought you’d… thought you’d didn’t want me here anymore.”  
“Why the fuck wouldn’t we want to have you here?”  
“Because it’s scary? Because I let Nat alone, because I used my powers in your house when I said I wouldn’t, because…”  
“Wanda, your brother saved my life. If you can do anything to bring him back, and if I can have a chance to thank him, you can do it in the middle of my living room with all the kids around if you want. There’s no need to hide in my kitchen in the middle of the night.”  
She tries not to smile but Clint can see the corner of her lips behind her knees.  
They stay silent for a few seconds, as she apparently doesn’t know what to answer to that. It’s Clint who breaks the silence again.  
“So, he’s alive. Wow.”  
She nods, and he can hear her laughing softly.  
“He is. But I haven’t been really good at helping him…”  
“Would it help if he was there too?”  
She raises her eyebrows.  
“I don’t know… do you think so?”  
“Well, magic isn’t really my thing, but maybe it’s about distance and… connexion? Maybe it would help to have some direct contact… Like when you sleep with little Nat.”  
She looks away, considering the question.  
“It… makes sense, I suppose…”  
“We could give it a try. And if it doesn’t work, or if you don’t feel comfortable with it, we’ll find another solution.”  
She nods, very slowly, and finally let the smile occupy her face.  
“Yeah… we could do that.”

The next time Natasha comes, she brings Steve with her. They organize a meeting in the kitchen while Laura and Wanda take the kids to the zoo.  
“Listen, it’s not that I don’t trust you with him Clint, you know that,” Steve repeats for the third time, “I just don’t want it to be a burden to you. You left the Avengers, it’s not to be involved in it against your will.”  
“We’re not doing it against my will. I really want to help.”  
“And you don’t have to feel like you owe us anything for retiring,” Natasha adds.  
“Okay, listen you two; I’m not helping the Avengers. I’m helping the little girl that lives under my roof. And you want to have her ready as soon as possible, don’t you?”  
“She would be useful” Steve admits. “But she seems a lot better since she’s here, so she’ll come back to SHIELD when she decides so.”  
“Until then, we’ll have to bring Pietro here,” Natasha concludes. “So, are you sure it’s okay?”  
“The kids can sleep together for a few months. And if it takes longer than that… well, I can still convince Laura to let me add a room somewhere.”  
Natasha smiles, the kind of smiles she makes when she knew the answer before it was said. She stands up, joining her hands.  
“Well then, I have to call Maria. Get ready, Barton.”

“Thank you, dad,” Wanda had whispered to Clint when they’ve opened the door to Maria, her agents and a hospital bed.  
Now Lila sleeps in the big room with Cooper and Cooper can’t stop complaining about how _she always takes all the toys, daaaaaad_.  
They put Pietro’s bed and all the machines in Lila’s room and Wanda sleeps with him on a mattress, when she sleeps. The shadows under her eyes have never been so dark, but she also can’t stop smiling so Clint lets her do it her way, and Laura makes her tea and coffee with milk or chocolate all day so she can get up without staggering.  
She still looks absent very often but as long as she doesn’t hurt herself on something, they let her stare at the void as long as she wants.  
Nathaniel is finally the only one who is quite unhappy with the arrangement, but when he cries at night Clint and Laura both groan, bury their faces in the pillows and laugh, waiting for him to calm down by himself.  
“It must come from your side. He obviously has your genes.”  
“I’m sorry; I have been a very quiet little boy, thank you very much.”  
“It’s not what your mother told me the first time I met her…”

They get used to the slow beeping of Pietro’s heartbeat on the machines. After a few days Clints finds himself enjoying it, actually. It helps him to relax.  
They get used to search for Wanda in her brother’s room first when she’s not coming when they call her. They get used to put a blanket over her narrow shoulders when she’s asleep against the wall or the bed.  
One evening, during dinner, they’re all laughing together and she calls Clint “old man” with a tone that reminds him so much of her brother that he nearly falls off his chair.  
They get used to the sound of her laugh when she feels safe and happy.

They are honestly sorry that she can’t come with them to the annual trip for their wedding’s anniversary but Natasha and Maria come to keep her company and Natasha sends Clint pictures of them on the couch with popcorn, so, they seem to be okay. Laura sends them pictures of the kids eating ice cream and they respond with a picture of them eating even more ice cream.  
Clint is surrounded by children and life is wonderful. 

When they get back, Wanda runs to the car with the biggest smile he’s ever seen and even the kids seem to understand immediately. 

He heads up to Pietro’s room following Wanda, Natasha following them and Laura following Natasha and they all push each other inside the room and the boy looks at them with an annoyed face.  
“I can’t believe, I’ve been spending so much time in this bed my legs can’t bear me anymore!”  
“Sounds like someone tried and fell,” Natasha points out with malice, and he breaks in a smile.  
“Bet you didn’t see that coming,” Clint adds quietly, and the light in the boy’s eyes does _something_ in his chest.  
As he approaches to hug him, he murmurs in his ear: “Glad to see you back.”  
“You didn’t see that coming, right?” Pietro immediately answers and Clint lets out a fake sigh.  
“Okay, that’s it; I don’t want him in my house. You can take him back.”  
“Afraid I’m stuck here as long as my legs are weak, though,” Pietro grins.  
“Yeah but with you, they’re gonna heal in what, three days?”  
“You think? _Oh my god_ , three days with you is going to be _so long!_ ”  
“It sure is going to if you keep making such bad jokes.”

Maria comes back the morning after with crutches for Pietro, takes back the useless material and talks for half an hour with Wanda in her room about what she wants to do next. She doesn’t tell Clint what she’s decided, but there’s no need to hurry after all. They’re still not too much around the dinner table.  
Wanda helps Pietro coming up and down the stairs but apart from this, the boy walks around by himself on his crutches, his thighs gaining muscle at sight. Not like Clint’s particularly looking, he just notices.  
“It’s terrible,” Pietro complains dramatically on his way to the kitchen. “I’m sure I could walk, but Natasha says if I start trying too early I will give my muscles a wrong shape and be good for another three days of re-education.”  
“No please, try,” Clint offers, pushing a glass or orange juice and toasts toward each of the twins. “I love to see you struggling.”  
They glance at each other over the counter and Pietro grins.  
“Yeah, because you feel a little less old like that, right?”  
“Didn’t I say something yesterday about you and your bad jokes?”  
“Oh, you mean that wasn’t true ?”  
“You, you’re really lucky I don’t hit disabled boys.”  
Pietro winks at him.  
“Well, you should take your chance now because when I get back on my feet it sure isn’t going to happen…”  
“Stop bragging around and eat, kid brother,” Wanda hits him in the shoulder then high-fives Clint, taking her own seat. Pietro makes a face, but then buries it in his breakfast, trying to eat as if he hadn’t been eating for months. Which is kind of the case, come to think of it?  
It’s also the first time in months that Wanda comes to eat breakfast being already dressed up and looking rested. There are still shadows under her eyes but Clint allows himself to smile.  
“You have an appointment somewhere or what, little girl?”  
“Pietro and I are going to SHIELD to check his legs and… talk about what to do next.”  
“Oh. Who’s driving you? Laura?”  
“No, Natasha’s coming to pick them up, actually,” Laura answers, entering the kitchen and coming to put a kiss on her husband’s cheek. Clint frowns, then sighs.  
“So this is what it feels, being retired,” he smiles, wrapping her arm around Laura’s waist. “Nobody tells me anything anymore.”  
“Oh, poor little thing,” she escapes from his grip with a smooth movement, sliding behind the twins and ruffling their hair. “But you two are coming back to dinner, right? You’re not staying back there now, are you?”  
“Not until Pietro is completely healed,” Wanda assures, smiling at her. “We’ll have to find some stuff for you on the way,” she adds for her brother. “Or maybe they kept some of your clothes…”  
“I have a bunch of old stuff he can borrow, you know,” Clint offers but Pietro twitches his nose with a mischievous smile.  
“It’s nice to offer, old man, but… honestly, no.”  
Clint shakes his head, trying to keep his laugh to himself.  
“F… you, you know what, get out of this house, I don’t want to see you here anymore.”  
“I know, because I’m making you look too bad…”  
“Natasha’s here!” Wanda interrupts, mouth full of toast, already heading to the front door.  
Pietro follows immediately after he’s taken back his crutches, but still turns around one last time to wink at Clint. 

“This house is going to feel really empty when they’re leaving,” Clint sighs as Laura closes the door behind them.  
She returns to him and comes snuggling against his chest. “Yeah… I was getting used to have a teenager…”  
“And we got lucky, she’s only got the good aspects. She didn’t ask for a scooter and never slammed a door…”  
“Maybe she’ll want one if she decides to live here, who knows… she could drive between here and SHIELD…”  
“We should adopt them both.”  
Laura sighs, steps back and leans on the counter.  
“I don’t know. That could make things weird.”  
Clint shrugs. “Wanda already calls us mom and dad, it just has to be official at this point…”  
“I wasn’t talking about Wanda.”  
“We’ll get used to Pietro, too.”  
Laura glances at him, smiles. “Yeah. Sure.”  
“What? Why not?”  
She shakes her head but refuses to answer anything.

“So, my sister’s calling you d ad now.”  
Pietro’s eyes are glowing with malice. They’re leaning on the couch, Wanda half-sleeping on her brother’s shoulder. It’s late, Laura had brought the kids upstairs, but she hasn’t been coming back so she probably just went to bed in the same time. The house has been noisy all the evening, kids screaming, teenagers screaming, parents laughing. It’s nice to end it on a couch with a bottle of beer in the hand and a nice company.  
“She’s been here for a while, now,” Clint shrugs.  
“Even if I was spending six months here I wouldn’t call you dad.”  
“Yeah, I think I had kind of guessed that…”  
“But, you know… It’s nice to know you took care of her.”  
They smile at each other. Pietro has a hand in Wanda’s hair and she smiles too, eyes closed, curled up against her brother.  
“No problem.”  
“You’d keep her if she wanted?”  
Clint raises his eyebrows. “She can stay here as long as she wants. And you too.”  
Pietro smiles. “Thanks. For her, I mean. I don’t want to stay in the same house than you.”  
“You’re welcome, bastard. I don’t want you here either. Now, I want you to answer a question.”  
“Yeah?”  
Clint shakes his bottle. “Can you actually get drunk or are you like the captain?”  
Pietro laughs so hard Wanda moans with dissatisfaction.  
“Yeah, I can, but it doesn’t last long enough to have any fun with it.”  
“That sucks.”  
“You’re telling me. There are other ways to have fun, though.”  
“Like what?”  
“Wait until my legs back, old man,” he winks are Clint, “and I’ll show you.”  
But they keep drinking and talking until they’re all waking up on the couch, Pietro and Wanda intertwined in an embrace that reminds Clint of kids sleeping together, and they’re both crushed against his side. Pietro has drooled on his shoulder and if Clint could reach for his phone without him noticing, he’d take a picture.

“You seem to be getting along wonderfully,” Laura remarks once they’re all awoken and the twins have left the house to run around – as much as they actually can – with the kids.  
“I don’t know if we can say that,” Clint laughs, grabbing a sponge in the sink to clean the crumbles of their breakfast.  
“I think we can.”  
“… I know that voice. You talk like you know something I don’t.”  
“Oh, don’t play this game with me, Clint, I know you.”  
“What are we talking about?”  
She smiles a little more, glancing at her husband with a playful light in her eyes.  
“We’re talking about the boy and his obvious crush on you. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”  
Clint looks up. “What?” 

“Look at this!” Pietro screams from the stairs, his feet thumping on every step. He turns to Clint, who’s finishing his coffee, and opens his arms wide. “No crutches!” Then he makes a smile, the kind of smile that means Clint’s fucked, and adds: “You know what that means?”  
“If you start running around this house I swear I’m killing you again.”  
Pietro lifts one foot.  
“Don’t you dare…”  
“Try and catch me, old man!”  
“Oh my god.”  
Pietro runs for literally five minutes straight, the bastard, before Wanda stops him in the garden by the window. They hear a “traitor!” coming from outside and laugh. When he enters, he’s still limping a little.  
“You spent way too much time in this house,” he states, pointing a falsely threatening finger at his sister.  
“I love you too, bro.”  
“Yeah, you’re lucky I do too…” he points his finger at Clint. “You, on the other hand…”  
“Yeah? Well come here, I’m waiting for you…”  
He raises two fists and pretends boxing in the air. There’s something lighting up in the eyes of the boy Clint should probably be more careful about.  
But what’s bad about a little fun?

Obviously he gets his ass kicked and his backs starts to remind him he’s too old for this shit. He still asks for revenge three times and for the last round, Wanda and Laura have started taking bets. 

“I’m not a sore-loser, I’m just saying that, if he had fought without superpowers, I would have won.”  
“Whatever you say, dad.”

“So, they’re going to leave, if Pietro’s okay, right?”  
“I suppose so.”  
The ceiling of their bedroom has never seen so interesting to Clint.  
“You’re not going to do anything about him, then?”  
He sighs a little too loudly. In the silence of the house, it seems like everyone can hear their conversation, but it’s the only place where he can’t avoid Laura, and she’s trying to bring up the subject three times today and three other times yesterday.  
“What do you expect me do to? I’m married. To you. With kids. And he’s like… twenty years younger than me.”  
“Yes, but I am married to you, with kids, and I still know when you’re flirting, Clint.”  
“I am not… I wouldn’t cheat on you, Laura, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here. It’s a test or what ?”  
“I’m not saying you would cheat on me. I’m saying, you like him. And I get you, he’s nice. And he saved your life. I would have fallen for you immediately if you had saved mine.”  
“You fell for me, anyway.”  
“I would have fallen for you faster.”  
“Still doesn’t mean anything.”  
“Whatever. I’m just trying to say that I wouldn’t be angry.”  
Clint turns his head, tries to see her face in the dark, but he can’t recognize her expression.  
This conversation is getting out of control.  
“You know, I don’t think we’re old enough to need to spice up our life with a toy boy or anything…”  
“You said that, not me.”  
“What does that mean? You want him for yourself? I’m not enough for you anymore?”  
Laura laughs really loudly in the silence.  
“I love you Clint, but you’re so dense sometimes… what part of “he has a crush on you” don’t you understand?”  
“The part where you’re trying to tell me to make a pass at him although we’re married.”  
She sighs, rolls over and climbs on her husband, resting her hands on his chest.  
“I don’t care, Clint. He’s into you and, from what I see, you’re kind of into him too. Life is short. You could have died if he hadn’t been here. You could not have had this conversation at all. But you’re here, you have this chance, and it’s because of him. I’m not saying you should leave us and run away with him. I’m just saying that I could let him have whatever he wants, just to have been the one who brought you back. You understand that?”  
Clint can’t look at her, so he stars at a point in the ceiling, a little on the left.  
“I know I should be lucky to have you, right now, but I’m a bit surprised.”  
“You’d want me to be jealous? Clint, I haven’t been jealous of your incredibly beautiful best friend, or any of her equally handsome colleagues, I think I can get over a cute teenager with a sexy smile.”  
“You said that, not me!”  
“Shhhh, you’ll wake up the… hu-oh, there it is.”  
They groan in unison as Nathaniels screams start to fill up the silence, and Laura rolls back to her side of the bed.  
“Go and take care of it, since it’s your fault,” she commands.  
“It’s not my… oh, whatever. I’m running away from this conversation.”

He gets up, moves quietly to the other room and picks up his son from the little bed to check if everything’s okay.  
“Never grow up, my son,” he murmurs as he settles him in his arms. “The world is really strange and I haven’t found out if it was for the best or the worst yet, so I can’t teach you any tricks.”  
As he starts walking toward the door, he finds out he’s not the only one up.  
“Oh, well… I was going to see if he needed anything,” Pietro explains in a low voice, “but you’ve been faster than me apparently.”  
“I didn’t hear you… I’m surprised you can actually move discreetly.”  
“Yeah, well I’m surprised you could have such a cute baby so we’re even I think.”  
“You wanna hold it?”  
Pietro shakes his head.  
“You got Wanda, now me? Are you just trying to get rid of him by any means or what?”  
“I just thought maybe holding it would make an honest man out of you for a change.”  
“I would become really boring if I become like you.”  
“Fuck you.”  
Pietro raises his hands, but they’re both smiling when he turns back and heads for the bathroom.  
As Clint walks in circles to put his son to sleep, listening to the water in the basin, his smile won’t disappear and okay, maybe there’s something right in the words of his wife. Maybe he has a thing for cute, hot-headed boys. This cute, hot-headed boy at least. And he’s going to leave soon enough. And maybe life is about new experiences.  
He leaves the room and enters the one where the twins sleep, finds Wanda sitting on the mattress.  
“What’s going on?” she asks soflty, and Clint feels a little ball of embarrassment in his stomach.  
“Could you… take care of Nat for a moment? I… need to do something.”  
She raises her arms without even thinking twice, and takes Nathaniel with ease. 

With a last smile and a deep breath, Clint leaves the room and enters the bathroom behind Pietro.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~And then you can imagine they fucked and the whole house heard them.~~


End file.
